My life as a SNEAK
by Queenie's Broken Heart
Summary: It was a kind of karma. But sometimes it felt like karma had taken it one step too far." Marietta Edgecombe's life changed drastically after that memorable day. This is an insight into her life as she tries to deal with "SNEAK" written across her face.


**Disclaimer: **JK Rowling's, not mine, as it happens.

Once again, Marietta Edgecombe prolonged those precious and few seconds she savoured everyday, before she knew she absolutely had to get up. Her head was pressed into her pillow, and she inhaled the comforting smell of the strawberry shampoo she used on her red-blonde hair. Once again, the image flashed across her mind. A gorgeous face, with delicate, complimentary features, a button nose, hazel eyes, pouting lips and absolutely flawless skin. This face was hers. Or rather, it had been.

Reluctantly, Marietta rose from her safe haven, where no revolted, embarrassed eyes stared at her and she faced the world once more, weary eyed. She dressed carefully, as habit bid her to do and then turned to her bedside locker. Tersely, she snatched up her hairbrush and dragged it through the soft red over and over again. She could see Cho, watching out of the corner of her eyes, as the curls repeatedly bounced back after each stroke that Marietta attacked the mass of hair with. Even her best friend would no longer look at her directly.

She could remember a time when Cho would openly sit and smile at her, as she got ready for the day. Marietta always had taken a much longer time to fix her hair and make-up before school than Cho ever had, which was no mean feat. She grimly reflected how at least that statement was still true, if nothing else about her life was. Her hair may not take so long now; she had given up making the effort when she realised nobody actually noticed her hair anymore; but her make-up truly did. Flinging the brush down, she picked up her least favourite object she possessed and mentally prepared herself for the worst few minutes of her day by closing her eyes and counting slowly to five. It was still a very significant object in her life; she just no longer enjoyed its company. She reopened her eyes. Then she raised her mirror.

It still caught her by surprise, every single time, the pimples that went right across her worn, marred face, and the involuntary drop her stomach took when she saw them. 'SNEAK'. That was what she was. That was everybody saw as whenever they forced themselves to look at her. A constant reminder written right across her face.

She inspected the hair that only served to highlight the red spots, and deemed it as neat enough. The old Marietta would never have settled for "neat enough". The old Marietta would be satisfied with nothing short of immaculate. She quickly moved on to the impressively large accumulation of beauty products she possessed, seized a sponge and began on the first of many layers. Her favourite bit was applying her eye make-up. She had always had beautiful eyes, that she knew for a fact. Which was why the balaclava had seemed like such a good idea until the boys started calling her a bank robber.

_Once upon a time there was a princess, who was cursed with unsightly blemishes and was forced to wear a balaclava all her life until she charmed a handsome prince with her stunning eyes, shared true love's first kiss and took off the mask, now pimple free. She lived happily ever after, and was of course the fairest of them all. The End. _

Somehow, Marietta's fairy tale hadn't come true.

She was in fact beginning to wonder if the spots would ever fade, or did _that girl_ consider being branded a sneak for the rest of her young life a reasonable punishment for one mistake? The professionals she had spent her summer seeing had all started out very positive, 'No problem, dear, try this, it will probably take it right off.' As each attempt failed and Marietta became increasingly frantic, the more unconfident these same so-called "professionals" grew. She gave up on them completely when they ceased to make eye contact with her or her mother. They eventually suggested she just left the disgusting marks for a few months and then see what happened. Marietta already knew what would happen. The pimples would flourish. She hadn't yet been proved wrong.

She tossed her lip-gloss back into the heap of lotions and potions, creams and paints with a sigh.

'Let's go,' she muttered to Cho, and the two of them exited the room hurriedly.

They took the same route every single day, at the exact same time, too, yet Marietta still noticed new faces whose eyes lingered one second too long or a fraction of a second too short on her face, as she passed them. What killed her was that a year ago she would have loved all the attention paid to her appearance. It was a kind of karma. But sometimes it felt like karma had taken it one step too far.

They tried and failed to be as unobtrusive as possible as they sat down to breakfast, though Marietta acknowledged she couldn't take all the credit this time. Cho Chang often found herself the subject of school gossip; she had paid a very high price for going out with Harry Potter, the Chosen One, the year after Cedric, her boyfriend, had been murdered. Add Michael to the equation, and the fact Cho had broken up with him after just a month, and she never had had a chance. Whispers regularly followed Cho's retreating back as she walked through the castle.

Marietta suddenly caught little Euan Abercrombie gawking at her from across the room and she scowled furiously at him. His rather prominent ears turned red and he averted his gaze very quickly indeed. Marietta sighed. It was no wonder, really, why Cho no longer would look at her directly. She had reacted to her self-consciousness by verbally and expressively attacking anyone who dared examine her face. She realised now life may have been somewhat easier if she had permitted people a good long stare and just gotten it over and done with. Euan, she particularly couldn't bear because she had been going out with his older brother, Nathan, before he dumped her because of the whole "sneak" thing. Of course, he claimed they had just grown apart, then she yelled at him and he changed his claim to not wanting to go out with some girl who'd sell out her own friends. Marietta maintained that he just couldn't stand the sight of her.

Taking a deep breath, and being sure to keep her face down as much as possible, she peeled the skin off an orange and coaxed it down her throat. The bitterness stung her tongue and she glared once again at the back of Hermione Granger's bushy haired head. The rather unattractive and swot of a student who had uprooted her life. Of course, Marietta realised now she had sold out the one good, positive and important thing she had ever taken part in. She felt guilty enough already; each one of the thirty or so members practically loathed her now, save Cho. She would have learnt her lesson without the pimples. It was clear from one glance that Hermione obviously wasn't the type of girl to worry about her appearance, so the punishment seemed twice as harsh. Marietta took in all the people in the Great Hall, hating them all, each and every one, with their appearances ranging from plain and unattractive to stunningly pretty, and all of them, absolutely every one, was better looking than her. Marietta felt a sudden rush of fondness toward Eloise Midgen, sitting at the Hufflepuff table, complete with her off-centre nose.

The post arrived on time as usual, and Marietta deigned to raise her head slightly so to search for her small brown owl. He arrived, landing before her with a lavender coloured envelope. There was only one person who insisted in writing everything in lavender, and that was her mother. She hated the woman, half the time, partly because Marietta felt a lot of the blame for her actions last year should be credited to her for putting her under so much pressure. The letters had reduced Marietta to tears. Then, of course, the woman had changed her mind completely and decided You-Know-Who was indeed back and didn't even bother to act ashamed.

Similarly, Mrs Edgecombe partially blamed her for the loss of her job. Between the way Marietta's name was now dirt and she hadn't even succeeded on blabbing to the Ministry that Potter had ran the club, plus the way it emerged to the public that her mother had been abusing her position by helping Dolores Umbridge spy on people, using the floo network, it was somewhat inevitable that she no longer held the same position. Of course, none of those reasons were enough to fire her, but it had left no room for incompetence of any sort afterwards. Her mother liked to keep her well informed on how job-hunting was going. Marietta's fault, too, no doubt, when the reports weren't very good. She tossed it in her bag, undecided yet as to whether or not she'd read it later.

As she stonily looked down the table at the laughing, chattering crowd, she remembered only too well, and with a stab of longing, how she was once one of them. It seemed like decades ago, although it was only a few short months. Things changed quickly, here. She now had a different attitude to life. She was a sneak no more. But a very wise person had once told her it was far easier to gain a bad name than to lose it. This had proved truer than she could have imagined. The world didn't believe in second chances.

She then looked sadly at Cho, who was demurely eating a piece of toast, her sad face pensive and solemn. In a flash, Marietta recalled the sweet joyous laugh and smile of Cho that she hadn't seen in the longest time. She continued to stare at her closest friend until Cho realised, and looked at her, alarmed. After a few seconds she blushed apologetically and dropped her gaze from Marietta's.

'Cho. It's ok,' she said softly, 'you don't have to avoid my face.' She even gave a small encouraging smile. Cho looked shocked but smiled weakly back and took in the face of Marietta, ironically no longer the face of a sneak, now the word was written right across it. She realised that the both of them had never felt so close to each other. They alone were two hardened, embittered people, and all before they were out of their teens. They sat there, superior, to the mere children sitting around them. Marietta surveyed their carefree, happy smiles, and knew she would never be like that again. She had seen the ugly side of life and there was no going back now. The old Marietta was dead and gone.


End file.
